axis
Fair Use Notice
  Axis Mission
 About us
  Letters/Articles to Editor
Article Submissions
RSS Feed


Axis of Logic Ezine - December, 2004 Printer friendly page Print This
By Axis of Logic Group
Axis of Logic
Tuesday, Dec 21, 2004

AXIS OF LOGIC E-ZINE
 
DECEMBER, 2004
 
 
Welcome to Axis of Logic! We send this edition of the Axis Ezine with warm greetings for the many who are celebrating the holidays during this time of the year. On my way to the Axis of Logic office this morning, I heard the corporate news report that 56% of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq and "do not believe it is worth fighting". Now that the damage has been done the U.S. corporate news has begun to report what we have witnessed and reported since the U.S. invasion began in March, 2003. Now that the damage has been done and Iraq is in ruins, the corporate news has begun to report part of the truth - that most Americans never truly believed in this war and want peace.

This will be the 4th Christmas season since September 11, 2001, in a world tinged with tragedy for so many. For most of us, reconciling this holiday season with the darkness that surrounds is difficult.  Holiday greetings often remind us of our deepest human desire for peace and joy, belied again this year by fear, anxiety and deep disappointment. We believe that real peace among individuals and nations can only begin with the advent of peace within one's true self. Thus, we encourage all readers, from whatever nation or world view, to make a special journey into the interior - a journey to identify the barriers to joy within and to find the inner peace that is afforded to everyone. It transcends all religions, ideologies, national boundaries and even the concepts of good and evil. It is devoid of self-righteousness, anxiety, greed, hatred, racism, selfishness, depression, despair, excitement and desire.

We are careful to remember that it is much easier for us to talk and write about such peace when our basic needs are met for shelter, clothing, food and physical security. We have much to learn from the victims of war who are sometimes able to find inner peace even in the midst of the horror. With this Ezine, we breathe a prayer for inner peace for them and all human beings, including those who have lost love, compassion, forgiveness and honesty in the making of war.

Thank you for reading and supporting Axis of Logic.  Please feel free to share this Axis E-zine with your friends and encourage them to subscribe!

 
In solidarity of compassion and peace,
 
Axis of Logic Editors
Boston, MA (USA)
617-787-3498
URL: www.axisoflogic.com
mail: les@axisoflogic.com
 





"Look, it's snowing!  Oh, I must go out!  Amsterdam asleep in the white night, the dark jade canals under the little snow-covered bridges, the empty streets, my muffled steps--there will be purity, even if fleeting, before tomorrow's mud.  See the huge flakes drifting against the windowpanes.  It must be the doves, surely; ...they are covering the waters and the roofs with a thick layer of feathers; they are fluttering at every window.  What an invasion!  Let's hope they are bringing good news!"

- Albert Camus, The Fall


 

 
"The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.  It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members".
 
- Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1844
Emancipation in the British West Indies






Iraq
To My American Friend with Love
Nesreen Melek, -Axis of Logic

Iraq
Was it worth it? Ask the child who lost his family'
Christian Hogsbjerg and Kevin Widdop, , -Socialist Worker
 




"We are simple people who chose principles over fear.

"And to George W. Bush, we say, 'You have asked us to Bring it on', and so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge?"
- Islamic Jihad Army in Iraq



 
 
Iraq
The Quiet of Destruction and Death
Dahr Jamail, - Electronic Iraq
 
"A deadly rain of high-tech bombs falls on Yugoslavia, a deadening rain of propaganda falls on Americans ---media-manipulated lies designed to prime the populace into supporting harsher military measures against a sovereign nation, in the name of protecting human rights. NATO is but a fig leaf for American 'interests,' and the bombing of Yugoslavia is but a global demonstration of the ruthlessness of the American empire."
- Mumia Abu-Jamail (April, 1999)
 
 


Poetry
Akkadian Winter
Les Blough, Editor, -Axis of Logic

Political Satire
Rumsfeld's Defense
Gary Corseri*, -Axis of Logic Exclusive


 



"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."
~ Omar Bradley
 

 
 
 
Letters from France
Armageddon and all that
Robert Thompson, -Axis of Logic
 
 
United States
Getting Sober
By Paul Harris, - Axis of Logic
 
Poetry
Requiem for America: Wake Up American World Citizens!
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) , -Axis of Logic
 

 

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.

When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
- Dom Helder Camara
Brazilian archbishop




Feltham  on the Economy

Invasion and World War IV
Michael C Feltham FCEA, ACPA, FSPA, -Axis of Logic
 
Poverty/World Hunger
UN report shows effects of poverty, war on children
Jennifer Barnett, -People's Weekly World Newspaper

Education

Scholars breathe `fresh air' ( report on Henry Giroux, Axis contributing writer)
Olivia Ward, -Toronto Star
 



 
 
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.  Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. " 
 
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society
of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
 
 
 


Axis Columnist, Britta Slopianka (Germany),
keeps us updated on the Death Penalty

 
Amy Knop-Narbutis - Villanovan
AFP

Death Penalty
Tibetan monk on death row in China
still alive: prison authorities

WebIndia123







"The lethal injection method … has turned dying into a still life, thereby enabling the state to kill without anyone involved feeling anything. Any remaining glimmers of doubt – about whether the man received due process, about his guilt, about our right to take life – cause us to rationalize these deaths with such catchwords as 'heinous', 'deserved', 'deterrent', 'justice', and 'painless'. We have perfected the art of institutional killing to the degree that it has deadened our natural, quintessentially human response to death."

Susan Blaustein, journalist, reacting to having witnessed
an execution in Texas, in Witness to Another Execution,
Harpers Magazine, May 1994, p. 53.




 
Civil Rights/Human Rights
Texas man executed on disproved forensics
Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, -Chicago Tribune
 
 
 

 




"You are my soul's repose in the time of pain, you who are my spirit's treasuer in the bitterness of poverty ... The melody of that person who brings me glad tidings of you, even if it be in sleep, is better than all poets' songs to me".
- Jalal al-Din Rumi


 
 




"You molded my heart for liberty, justice, greatness, and beauty. You cannot imagine how deeply engraved upon my heart are the lessons you taught me. Never could I delete so much as a comma from the great percepts that set before me."

- Simon Bolivar in a letter to his
tutor, Simon Rodriguez.

 
 

 
 
 

 
 


 
"One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnotic definitions or dictations. "

- Herbert Marcuse
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Media Critiques
Media Alert: Naked Empire - Part 1-- The Masters Of Self-Adulation
Mainstream Reviews of Books by Andrew Marr, Jon Snow and John Pilger, -Medialens
 
 

 
 

 
Iraq
IRAQ RESISTS! Despite U.S. bombs and napalm
Leslie Feinberg, -Workers World
The Anti-war Movement in the United States is only a part of an international struggle for peace. Those at its front are on the ground, resisting invasion and occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Those working in the American, European and Asian anti-war movement have unprecedented opportunities and a solemn responsibility to support those who are giving their lives, families and resources to stop war and bring down the U.S.-led corporate global empire.

Watch for Axis of Logic's New Focus on the International Anti-war Movement in January, 2005
- Axis of Logic Editors
 

 
 
 
Antiwar Movement
Counter-Inaugural Demonstration January 20, 2005
Call to Action, -ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)

Antiwar Movement
The Vigil
John N. Cooper, Axis of Logic
 
 
 

 
 
How lovely this forest spring -
Not a dwelling within miles,
Just clouds of misty spray
Above the plunging torrent.
The path winds up to where
Gibbons cry among the trees.
A tiger's roar re-echoes
Among the lonely hills,
Hushing the pines' soft whisper
And the cawing of the birds.
Skirting the dripping rocks,
I climb toward the peak
Or rest on the pebbled bank
To peer through tangled creepers
At the distant moated walls
Whence the city's din comes softly.


- Shih Te, Tao Poet
 

 
We wish every Axis reader a holiday season that brings inner peace, reflection and renewal of strength and purpose as we enter a new year of power, solidarity and unity in the global anti-war movement. We wish you all a new year filled with the blessings that come to those who "do the right thing" with their time, resources and energy.
 
Please consider contributing to Axis of Logic with your time and donations.
 
Solidarity,
 
The Axis of Logic Group
A Boston-based, Global Network
December, 2004

subscribe
Printer friendly page Print This
If you appreciated this article, please consider making a donation to Axis of Logic. We do not use commercial advertising or corporate funding. We depend solely upon you, the reader, to continue providing quality news and opinion on world affairs.Donate here




World News
AxisofLogic.com© 2003-2015
Fair Use Notice  |   Axis Mission  |  About us  |   Letters/Articles to Editor  | Article Submissions |   Subscribe to Ezine   | RSS Feed  |